“The taxpayers save on the salaries of low-utility positions including their overhead, and the funds could be better used to fund the basic social costs of health and education”
One of my favorite advocacies vis-à-vis the present political system is the reduction of elective positions.
Make it simple, stupid.
Note how the election canvass in Taiwan was done manually, and yet, two hours or so after the precincts closed, the trend was clear. DPP’s Lai had won with 60 percent, though the party lost its legislative majority by one seat.
Why was this so?
Basically, even if third parties could run, there is a preponderant two-party contest.
That was the system we had until Marcos abrogated the 1935 Constitution and merged both the collaborating LP and NP into his KBL.
Our 1987 Constitution came up with a senseless hybrid: a multi-party system with the presidential form winning against a parliamentary form by a solitary vote in a 49-member appointive Constitutional Commission, one having resigned by the time the draft was hastily finished.
As in the US, Taiwan has tandem voting. The president and the vice-president must be elected as a team.
Here we have a multiplicity of parties, and in 2022, the Comelec accredited 10 presidential candidates, with the eventual winner not participating in Comelec-sponsored debates.
In 1992, 1998, 2010, and 2016, our electorate voted for cross-party presidents and vice-presidents, though in 2022, the vice-presidential candidate carried her presidential team-mate to resounding victory.
Last January 13, the Taiwanese voter wrote his choice for the presidential tandem in one ballot, another for his district member of the legislature, and another for the party.
He then puts the ballot in three cardboard boxes, and by 4:30 pm or earlier, the canvass began.
Very simple for a country which manufactures the voting machines that countries like the Philippines buys.
You would think they are Third World while we in this country have sophisticatedly opaque automated voting.
In France, they elect their president through a national vote, and they have run-off nationwide elections if no one gets a majority.
Their president is the head of state and head of government, his appointed prime minister, a member of parliament, is the COO.
In other parliamentary forms, there is a king as head of state, with the prime minister chosen by a majority in the parliament, such as in Thailand or the UK, head of government.
This is probably the form our present congressmen want which is why they are itching to switch to parliamentary.
But the ordinary Filipino voter, 55 million or so strong, who thinks his equality with the rich and the well-educated comes only when he elects his choice for president, vice-president and senators, will not agree to being deprived of that right by 10 million from the upper classes.
The French have a Senate or their equivalent Senate, though these are chosen not by direct vote like we do, but by electors comprised of MPs and local officials.
Which probably explains why they don’t have actors, TV personalities and the like in their Senate.
In Germany, as in other multi-party parliamentary forms, the members of parliament vote for their ceremonial president who is head of state, while their party or coalition-chosen leader is the prime minister or chancellor.
Here in our benighted land where a farcical democracy is all form with little substance, we elect in synchronized manner all our national and local officials, plus that bastardized party-list in one blow, so we have a kilometric ballot which only a machine like Smartmatic, soon to be a Korean Miru, can read in time, never mind the opacity of the system.
Which is why if we are to revise the 1987 Constitution, I still advocate a presidential system because our people will not be deprived of their choice of a supreme leader, but with tandem voting for ALL executive positions: president, governor, city mayor, municipal mayor.
A two-party system where third parties can still field candidates but deprived of government-funded poll inspectors similar to the NP and LP of yore would in convention likely not allow dynasts to remain in perpetuity.
So the voter goes to the polls just hand-writing either the party for a straight vote, or the presidential team, the congressman, two or three names for a regionally-chosen senate (if we have a bi-cameral legislature), a gubernatorial team and a mayoral tandem.
One straight party vote if he chooses, or six to seven names only.
The barangay chairmen, elected in mid-terms, will comprise the local legislature, and the municipal mayors the provincial legislature.
The taxpayers save on the salaries of low-utility positions including their overhead, and the funds could be better used to fund the basic social costs of health and education, etc.
But will our political overlords, jealous of their titles and the perks and privileges that go with it, allow such?
Likely not, but we can dream, can’t we?